June 30, 2003
cutting off the nose to spite the face
Or is it a question of digging our own grave? In any event, this is just not worthy of a great nation, or of a people who think they are a part of a great nation. French wine didn't make...
India today
Bloggy has found real pride in Calcutta. I was in this incredible city in the early nineties. There is no community like it anywhere, even in all of India, not least for its traditional culture of the arts, intellectualism and...
June 29, 2003
marriage is a government sacrament?
All this is coming from the second most powerful person in the country (third, if we have to count Bush in addition to Cheney): [Senate Majority Leader Bill] Frist said he feared that the ruling on the Texas sodomy law...
Williamsburg tourists
Paul, Barry and Scott stop to check out the mysterious Galapagos black pool during our tour of Williamsburg gallery openings Friday night....
swinging Diego Garcia
[photo does not illustrate incidents in this story, but it is from Diego Garcia] Although the following events seem to have occurred some time ago, I suspect things are still interesting on this not-so-tight little island. A story to...
June 27, 2003
waiting
Well, it was a long time between trains. Sadly, if he even knows it's there, he probably thinks it's too big....
Stonewall Place, June 26th, 2003
At the Stonewall Place rally yesterday evening, called by Queers for Peace and Justice: New York City Councilmember Chris Quinn LAMBDA Executive Director Kevin Cathcart...
um . . . yup
The AP reports,Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist says Thurmond showed what one person can do by living life to the fullest. Sometimes even an atheist likes to think about an afterlife. I would really like to think that Strom Thurmond...
June 26, 2003
vintage Stonewall
Virtually 34 years to the day after the Stonewall rebellion, the U.S. Supreme Court has decided we have rights. Today's ruling invalidates sodomy laws in the 13 states which have retained them until this moment. Until 1962, when Illinois...
will we even notice?
Today, Thursday, on what is essentially the beginning of "Gay Pride" weekend, the Supremes will announce their pontifical decision about whether us queers may have sex. Either they're going to be delivering good news, or they're really asking for...
June 25, 2003
Oh, Canada!
Tuesday is Canada Day, and we're very happy about that, for Canada and for us. Yea Canada! [The image is from the fabulous short video, "Switch to Canada"]...
"Paul P. Last Flowers"
[revised June 26 with additional information] I can't believe I hadn't yet posted anything on a wonderful artist very new to New York, who is opening a one-man show tonight at Daniel Reich. Disclaimer: We bought three of Paul P.'s...
"I want whatever they got"
Maureen Dowd's just about had it with affirmative action!Justice Thomas's dissent in the 5-4 decision preserving affirmative action in university admissions has persuaded me that affirmative action is not the way to go. The dissent is a clinical study of...
June 24, 2003
score another one for the rich guys
Something's fucked-up about the way we depend upon the narrowly-argued politically-subjective legal-precedent search exercises of nine lifetime appointees (arbitrary lifespans, arbitrary appointments) in order to advance (or, in recent years much more likely, retreat) on social issues. Other nations normally...
"I don't know"
Joseph Chaikin died on Sunday at his home in Greenwich Village. The great actor and creative director had lived for years with the burden of a congenital heart disease, but this weekend he finally had to leave the boards. His...
June 23, 2003
"There Is No Scene"
It read like a documentary, and I assumed that's what it was. Yea! But then I began to have my doubts. So, was it just the wishful thinking of this perverse activist queer which so easily cooperated with Scott Treleaven's...
June 21, 2003
really missing Mark Lombardi
I came late to Jerry Salz's beautiful tribute to Mark Lombardi last month in the Village Voice, having pulled it off my reading stack only this weekend, but Saltz's paean and his regret for our loss of this wonderful artist...
June 20, 2003
even Juneteenth was way premature
Yesterday was the 19th of June - "Juneteenth," but this is not yesterday's story. The social and political geography may sound strange, but I first heard about this holiday while working in Boston 25 years ago. Barbara was a very...
June 19, 2003
they care enough to bomb the very best*
How are we supposed to register this acount of today's rather sensationalist domestic terrorism story?The bad news is that terrorists were plotting to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge. But the good news — at least according to Mayor Michael Bloomberg...
U.S. bars election, limits speech, jails party workers
Tell us all once again why we had to bomb Iraq. Yesterday in a town 150 miles south of Baghdad, even the local American military commander, together with his officers and the soldiers and marines under them, were disappointed with...
June 17, 2003
Germans remembered as revolting - in the best sense
Half a century ago today, and only 8 years after the end of the Nazi regime, long-suffering workers in east Berlin decided they had had enough. Because of Russian tanks however, it would be almost another 4 decades before the...
June 15, 2003
"Jewish-only" road
Yea! Anees, our Palestinian friend living in East Jerusalem now has his own blog up and running. One of his first posts concerns the construction of a totally redundant road to nearby Jewish settlements (on occupied Palestinian land) which Israel...
June 13, 2003
just for the crowd
Sometimes lacrosse is more than just lacrosse. [when it's a crowded Union Square on Greenmarket day, and the uniforms are very much optional]...
Bush shows Segway fails foolproof test
The Segway is supposed to be foolproof - "A two-wheeled, intuitive personal transportation device that won't fall. This super-smart, computer chip-laden machine won't topple with a driver's clumsiness." This week our very own chief fool showed this to be just...
June 12, 2003
destroying homes can only destroy everyone's security
I don't know how a figure could be strictly defined, even if one could somehow be located on the record, but while a friend who has spent time in Israel and Palestine reported anecdotally that the number of homes which...
June 11, 2003
naked for art - and much more
Spencer Tunick did his thing in Barcelona on Sunday. But Barcelona did more than Spencer's thing. While Mayor of New York, Rudolph Giuliani censored Tunick's art, along with the inclination of New Yorkers to happily get naked in its service....
"he vaguely looks like Robbie Williams"
I expect Bloggy will be seeing an increase in traffic in the near future. The very hot and very sweet Glenn thanks him for help in setting up his new site:Barry recommended my server, helped me get everything running, and...
modern antiquity
I couldn't recomend more highly the Les Arts Florissants production of Rameau's "Les Boréades" which opened June 9 at the Brookly Academy of Music. I'd be astounded if it hasn't sold out already, but the Academy Howard Gilman Opera House...
have we made Iraq "A land fit only for flies?"
What does Baghdad look like today? The strongest account I've read succeeds where even pictures have failed. An excerpt:And then you drive back, through the centre, and see what has happened to the ministries and powerhouses that used at least...
June 6, 2003
Bush is cooked?
John Dean (remember John Dean?) suggests that lying about the reason for war is an impeachable offense. My first thought is how could Americans think it's worse than fibbing about a blow job, but Dean argues that the NYTimes columnist...
June 5, 2003
for once, it's not about Martha
Ellis Henican writes in today's New York Newsday:The Martha Stewart case isn't exactly Enron, where thousands of workers saw their whole life savings vaporized. Martha isn't WorldCom, where the three-card-monte accounting reached $9 billion high. She isn't even Arthur Andersen,...
June 4, 2003
for Um Mazen
A Palestinian friend in East Jerusalem sent this email on Tuesday to me and to a number of others. I have not altered a single letter. These words do not come from another planet or another time - they describe...
June 3, 2003
"you can not see them anymore"
"A Muslim boy and a Jewish girl who lived next door to each other in Baghdad became friends." UPDATE This beautiful story originally appeared as an Op-Art item in the NYTimes, but it no longer shows up the paper's site....
tricked into a war, and next a "khaki election"*
I know Paul Krugman shows up a lot in this space, but he's almost the only, and certainly the most visible, major media reporter we have who has both a head and the courage to display it. Today his paper...
June 1, 2003
"my sexuality is my own sexuality"
"My sexuality is my own sexuality. It doesn’t belong to anybody. Not to my government, not to my brother, my sister, my family. No one."Ahraf Zanati is now safe in Vancouver, but two years ago he was one of 52...
